2-4. Max Black and the Museum of Applied Logic

One of the most tectonic demonstrations of Russell's conception of vagueness and the iterative nature of objects is Max Black's Museum of Applied Logic. Here, Black proposes a hypothetical series of objects with an unfinished block of wood on one end and a finely crafted Chippendale chair on the other. In between these determined ends is an infinitely incremental series of objects that are iterating their way from the block of wood to the finished chair. The question to the relationship between language and material is whether or not one can determine which object is the line between the "chair" and an unformed collection of materials. Similar questions could be asked across different scales of architecture. 3. For example, what is the line between the building and the landscape. Or, can a surface show itself in the process of formation? 4. And then, can that process of formation produce an iterative mediator instead of the traditionally crisp line between the category "building" and category "landscape." Other questions along these lines ask at what instance a tadpole becomes a frog or, if a person is simply an accumulation of biological processes and ever-refreshing cellular systems, how can a single proper-name persist over the course of one's life? And, does the name actually persist over the stability of genetic information that can be represented mathematically?